An aggressive sort of question. But one that Signalyard faces frequently. And to be fair, it’s not a bad question. What does an ad agency do nowadays?

The good ones provide a level of technical expertise that can be hard to replicate in-house. They know the consumer and understand ways to engage them. They know how to measure the effectiveness of campaigns.

But can they really know the consumer better than the brand does? Are they providing the most appropriate technical skills or merely the ones they have on hand?

“The days when agencies could expect multiple $100 million-plus, agency-of-record accounts to go up for grabs each year are now barely visible in the rear-view mirror.” So starts an article in Advertising Age earlier this year.

“What’s happening to agencies is the same thing that has happened to the PC business, the airline business, and the steel business. The advertising agency industry is being disrupted.,” marketing author and consultant Tim Williams adds in his piece on the subject.

Who’s doing the disrupting is interesting. Tech companies and software designers, blue-chip management consultancies, freelance video producers and user experience specialists, product designers and innovation agencies. All of them are moving in on the space we call marketing, the space that was previously the preserve of the advertising agency. The disruption comes as the value chain of marketing, even the definition of marketing, change more rapidly than we might have dreamt possible five years ago.

The future lies in a blend of specialist and polymath. Specialists in understanding the new art of engagement (rather than the dying art of advertising). Yet polymaths who are able to draw on skills in, or at least understanding of, software, consulting, mobile, video, service design, and never-ending innovation. The future lies with those who look to disrupt even what they have just established as the new yardstick for effective engagement.

I am tempted to add that’s what Signalyard is all about. But then that would turn this into an advertisement. And an advertising agency is the one thing we’re not.

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/are-you-an-ad-agency-or-what/feed/0Making SEO simple againhttp://www.signalyard.com/making-seo-simple-again/
http://www.signalyard.com/making-seo-simple-again/#respondFri, 26 Sep 2014 12:31:38 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=240Read more]]>If search engines are the gateway to the web (they are) then SEO – the trick of getting your brand to the top of natural search results –is the key to the gates. Trouble is, for a while search engine optimisation became more and more of a dark art.

That is until recently. In the last two years in particular, Google has focused huge efforts on rewarding companies who provide the kind of content that real people are searching for. A series of updates to Google’s search algorithm have driven down and out the “black hat” techniques which relied on tricks, schemes and link spam to boost search rankings. Now, Google is focused on rewarding those who produce and curate valuable content rather than trying to game the algorithm.

Does that make it easier for marketers to develop their position in search engines? Well probably not easier, but better. Because now it comes back down to good marketing: that’s story-telling; engaging people with the content they want; developing helpful, relevant content rather than interruptive advertising.

SEO is, now more than ever, about listening to what people want. It’s about social media conversations, about using online video, blogs and PR to help people find and understand your brand. It’s not about link bombing; Javascript mouseover redirects; cloaking and “black hat” techniques. They simply don’t work any more.

What does this mean for outdoor active brands? It makes it more important than it’s ever been to work on inbound marketing. So, what to do today:

Develop quality content that is focused on the right people. Understand what your customers and potential customers are looking for online and focus relentlessly on this. It’s not about quantity of content crammed with target keywords, it’s about shareable, remarkable content.

Spend time finding out more about inbound marketing. You’ll find that you already do more of it than you realise. But you can probably do more still. Inbound marketing will bring quality customers to your website – cyclists, runners, skiers and sailors who have already self-selected as interested in what you have to offer.

Develop buyer personas to better understand your customers. User research to figure out what they want. Use social media to engage them in conversation.

Each time you talk to your agency / agencies, talk about what effect their proposed activities will have on search. If you don’t like the answer, then don’t do it. Because if you’re not making it easier for your (potential) customers to find you, then what’s the point in marketing?

“We are a nation of lazy porkers”, I was reminded on switching on the radio recently, which is leading to an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes in ever younger people. As a society we are addicted to sugar. And it’s getting worse.

Well not me, I thought smugly. Me and my cycling, running, skiing friends are about as far away from “lazy porkers” as you can get. But does that mean that we don’t have a sugar problem?

Just last year, when I left the house to go for a longer ride on a Sunday morning I would have stuffed my jersey with three energy bars, a banana, and a pre-made isotonic drink. Between them I could have counted not far short of 30 teaspoons of sugar.

Of course I was convinced I was burning it all off again in a 100-mile hilly ride. I’m no porker, I thought to myself. I have the lean frame of a road cyclist.

Then a pro cycling coach told me that a single piece of chocolate cake could undo the benefits of half a day’s training for his elite athletes. He was arguing for me to drop the pre-made isotonic drinks and stick with water/hydration tablets.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency says we should eat no more than 60g (about 15 teaspoons) of sugar a day, but the UK average is already 20 teaspoons and climbing fast. The problem for many (I include myself) is not realising how much sugar is in the foods they don’t think of as sweet – it is added to bread, ready meals, pasta sauces and breakfast cereals.

Even when, as an endurance athlete, you’re burning it off again, that doesn’t mean the sugar isn’t doing you harm. A constant intake of sugar forces your pancreas to work overtime, possibly increasing your likelihood of type-2 diabetes in later life. And it can play havoc with your cholesterol levels, raising the risk for heart disease. And most worrying of all, a Swedish study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests drinking two or more sugary drinks a day can increase your risk of pancreatic cancer by 90 per cent.

Research in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sports found when a runner consumes high-glycemic (Gl) foods, like white bread, ice cream, or high-sugar energy bars an hour before a run, he or she may become fatigued more quickly. In the research, athletes performed significantly better 45 minutes after eating a low-Gl meal (like an apple with peanut butter and oats) than a high-GI meal. Eating the high-Gl foods an hour before a run was causing athletes to experience a sugar crash, while the low-GI foods were carrying the runners farther and faster into the run.

The answer for most cyclists and runners will not to be to embark suddenly on a crash no-sugar diet. But it is probably time to pay more attention to how much sugar and what kinds of sugar you do eat. Using sugar-free hydration tablets like nuun is a great place to start

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/is-that-six-sugars-or-eight-in-your-training-cup/feed/0Responsive marketing – time to get agile marketershttp://www.signalyard.com/responsive-marketing-time-to-get-agile-marketers/
http://www.signalyard.com/responsive-marketing-time-to-get-agile-marketers/#respondFri, 06 Jun 2014 08:13:18 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=250Read more]]>Responsive design is the biggest change to website design for years. If you’re not aware of what it is, it’s a way of making a site look right on a whole range of devices – from iPhones to desktops – so it’s easy to read and navigate without panning and scrolling. As the number of consumer devices and types continues to proliferate, responsive design is increasingly the only way to build coherent experiences online.

It’s about time we had the same change to core marketing thinking. Just like older website design approaches meant sites had to be reworked for different browsers, so dominant marketing approaches are still all about pushing a single, identical message out through very different channels. From the brand marketing department’s perspective, that looks like consistency. But from the consumer’s perspective, that can all too easily look like a rigid, linear, fixed pattern of communication that can’t deal dynamically with feedback or take on board change.

Just like responsive design adapts content to look great on different devices, so responsive marketing adapts itself to changing consumer requirements, external events like news stories, input from consumers, or simply to opportunities which come up from time to time. Hundreds of commentators have noted Oreo’s brilliant response to the lights going out during this year’s Superbowl – where the brand tweeted within moments of the power failing: “Power out? No problem: You can still dunk in the dark”

“The instant-advertising era may not have been born Sunday night, but it took its first assured steps during the 34-minute power outage at the Super Bowl in New Orleans,” wrote the Washington Post about Oreo’s responsive marketing. “Oreo’s ad team took just five minutes to conceive and produce the ad, according to company spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati. It also required that ad agency and client executives be at the same place at the same time. Marketing executives from Oreo … were assembled during the game in a “social-media command center” at its digital ad agency in New York, 360i, ready to jump on any development. The group included the agency’s creative directors and its tech-support team.”

The Post’s analysis is, as we would expect, bang on the money. Responsive marketing is not just a matter of timing. It requires a major shift in the way in which we work. We need to move from linear project management (where we had a string of meetings between agency and client to refine the messaging and approve creative treatments) to agile thinking (where we decide and act immediately). We need to stop looking for perfect (we never got there anyway) and instead put multiple iterations out into the world to test and learn what will work best.

Consumers themselves don’t remain static. Their mood changes during the day and week, the mode (work / family / sport / social) they’re in changes, the context shifts so what’s welcome information at one moment becomes annoying interruption the next. Even the best responsive marketing cannot cope with so many variations and still be just right all the time. But by being responsive and agile, marketing content can at least make strides to be more valuable in our consumers’ lives.

We work hard at SignalYard but when the opportunity arises we go for a ride. Sometimes it gives you time to think, other times a chance to clear the lungs and get fresh air. In this case, it was a great reminder of just why so many advertisers want to talk to cyclists.

After taking up an invitation to ride the famous Gospel Pass I found myself joining 8 others for a jaunt around the amazing Welsh countryside, starting from Abergavenny, making our way over to Hay-On-Wye then the infamous Gospel Pass climb and amazing descent back toward the startpoint.
Whilst the ride was amazing, what struck me was the company I was in. It was a fairly typical group of MAMILs. Committed enough to take a day off in the name of riding, yet casual enough to happily stop for coffee and enjoy a 2 hour lunch afterwards (a well earned pint and amazing food at The Hardwick http://www.thehardwick.co.uk).

At the start of the day I hardly knew anyone but, over the length of the ride, got to know them one by one and realised that over half owned their own business and those employed were in senior positions in a range of sectors. What drew us all together was the joy of a bike ride but what the group also had in common was spending power and appeal to advertisers.

I know I work in a buoyant industry – Most of those involved in the cycling industry have read and regularly cited the British Cycling & LSE report which outlines how the UK cycling economy is worth £3bn a year.

We know what the stats say but what’s really great is when you get a chance to head out on the bike and all the positive stories we tell our clients about the value of cyclists are confirmed by the people that we are riding with!

This might all sound like a bit of spin – marketing cyclists as the new celebrities. But it comes from research commissioned by the British Heart Foundation. The Implicit Association Test examined people’s subconscious attitudes towards different sports. And it found cyclists are considered to be 13 per cent more intelligent and ‘cooler’ and ten per cent more charitable than other people.

The survey, conducted by Mindlab, also showed almost two thirds of 600 adults surveyed admitted to liking lycra. Nearly a quarter of people in the study said they would prefer to date a cyclist over other sporting people. And 27 per cent would also want a cyclist on their pub quiz team, compared to 18 per cent preferring a footballer.

The BHF commissioned the research to mark the opening of registration for its annual London to Brighton bike ride in June – the biggest charity bike ride in Europe.

Finally, some positive marketing for cyclists en masse.

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/marketing-cyclists/feed/0Branding as marketing contenthttp://www.signalyard.com/branding-as-marketing-content/
http://www.signalyard.com/branding-as-marketing-content/#respondSat, 09 Nov 2013 08:48:58 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=244Read more]]>Content is marketing. That’s pretty much a given (at least for those reading this blog). But do we really make full use of marketing as content? Particularly if you take the very definition of a brand, and say that’s content.

I’ve just finished developing a brand book for a client. The client is a start-up. They’re pretty forward-looking by developing the brand book before the brand even launches in Beta. But of course it’s never too early to start capturing your story and presenting it in a way that makes the whole brand truly authentic. The brand book is now going to those writing the code as well as those writing the content marketing. As a result the whole customer experience will seem more authentic from the outset. The whole, dispersed, launch team all get the story.

The next stage is to make the brand book itself part of the launch marketing and comms. This is possible because the brand book has been written as a story. You can sit down and read it. When complete, there’ll be animation, video, pictures. It’s been developed as a piece of content, so that people read it to get the brand. The first people who read it will be the marketers, developers and staff who work on the launch. But then customers. Reviewers. Business writers.

In this way the marketing handbook developed for those who work inside the business is largely identical to the communications aimed at customers outside the business. When both ends of the customer service chain have the same understanding of the brand, so everyone is empowered to act to improve it. Shop floor staff can resolve problems themselves, customers can be confident in recommending the brand to their friends. We’re not all struggling to interpret a piece of business strategy waffle, we’re all reading the same story, and enjoying what it (the brand) means to us.

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/branding-as-marketing-content/feed/0Bespoked Bristol cycles to Londonhttp://www.signalyard.com/bespoked-bristol-cycles-to-london/
http://www.signalyard.com/bespoked-bristol-cycles-to-london/#respondSun, 20 Oct 2013 07:35:03 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=242Read more]]>Bespoked Bristol established itself as the greatest handmade bicycle show in Europe. It became the place to drool over beautiful steel creations and wallow in what it took to design the perfect bike. Personally, I loved the event and what it stood for. And all the bike brands who exhibited there who I know seemed to rate it highly.

But Bespoked is now on the move. Its hand forced by Bristol council selling off part of Brunel’s iconic train shed at Temple Meads station, where the event was held for years, Bespoked will surface in 2014 at the new venue of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Exhibitors will set up stands in the velodrome itself, on the flat area inside the track or on the banked seating.

This week I was with a Signal client who wasn’t delighted that the event was moving to London. Nor were they particularly happy with the layout of the event within the velodrome. Others have expressed their sadness that a key trade show has ended up in London. Taking to social media, show exhibitors’ comments included: “That’s a terrible shame”; “The provinces need more active cycling culture”; “I probably will be exhibiting, but I’m not that keen on it being in London to be honest”; and “I just always thought it was great it being in Bristol.”

Organiser Phil Taylor has defended the decision against accusations of Londoncentricism. “We looked all over the country and the velodrome is such an amazing space and it just happens to be London”, he said on Twitter. And, separately, “It has moved once before and coped, so I see no reason why that won’t be the same again.”

Phil has pointed out that the velodrome is “one of the greatest cycling buildings in the world”. It’s the centrepiece of the Lee Valley Velo Park which finally opens to the public on March 4th 2014 – just five weeks before Bespoked arrives on April 11 to April 13. It will certainly be a great chance to visit the new UK cycling facilities to see if that Olympic sparkle remains embedded in the boards and banking. And to once again drool over beautiful steel.

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/bespoked-bristol-cycles-to-london/feed/0Cycling is the New Golf #2http://www.signalyard.com/cycling-is-the-new-golf-2/
http://www.signalyard.com/cycling-is-the-new-golf-2/#respondThu, 05 Sep 2013 07:51:13 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=246Read more]]>Further evidence that the business deals done in the past on the golf course are now being done on bikes. Planning this week’s mega-deal between Vodafone and Verizon took place as much in the saddle as in the boardroom. The final price was agreed by the two CEOs, Vittorio Colao of Vodafone and Lowell McAdam of US mobile giant Verizon whilst they were on exercise bikes in the gym of a San Francisco hotel.

If you haven’t already done so, it might be time to put the golf clubs on eBay and stock up on arm warmers and a waterproof gilet for the winter’s business deals.

]]>http://www.signalyard.com/cycling-is-the-new-golf-2/feed/0Marketing is the new newshttp://www.signalyard.com/marketing-is-the-new-news/
http://www.signalyard.com/marketing-is-the-new-news/#respondThu, 04 Jul 2013 08:29:29 +0000http://localhost/signalstaging/?p=261Read more]]>Speed of reaction is becoming as important for sports brands as it is for athletes. Running brands and other sports marketers have been amongst the leaders in a ‘real-time marketing’ trend over the past three years for brands to act more like newsrooms.

Gatorade was one of the first. Their Mission Control Center was set up to monitor and react to fast-changing social media sentiment: “Whenever people are talking, clicking, typing about our brand, mission control is there to listen, to create a dialogue, track analytics of websites, campaigns and social media…”

Now Adidas UK is running towards real-time marketing by putting responsive social media teams on standby to react within minutes of key sporting moments. Their ‘moments of celebration and acknowledgment’ strategy sets out to bring in-house and agency staff together to create tactical campaigns around sports fans’ conversations.

The strategy, in development for two years, was finalised following analysis of Adidas’ sponsorship of London 2012, where the brand made last minute updates to tactical communications when Team GB won medals. That approach led to a peak in positive sentiment about Adidas, according to YouGov BrandIndex data.

Now the real-time marketing strategy will be expected to feed directly into sales. Yesterday’s sales figures showed a 6% year-on-year drop in first quarter sales in Western Europe. Adidas recognised that 2012 was always going to be a tough year to follow, and identified innovation as key to growth this year.